You killed Lane Skarner

Funkin Dunkin·9/13/2015, 5:11:23 PM·1 votes·215 views

I really do not understand why you've decided to hack and slash at Skarner more than any other champion in this game over the last year, but this last changed killed him in lane. Your arbitrary decisions to make a champion "jungle only" is rather short sided when you don't consider how players use champions. I've been a Skarner main for the last 3 years and this last change just dismantled his 1v1 play ability outside of the jungle. The only reason he's seen an increase in play and win% is because you made him kind of idiot proof compared to having to learn how to use him like the previous build. Here's why:

  1. Before the change a good Skarner player had to keep his Q's charged for that extra movement speed for R, or if he was ganking, know when to go for a pull or when to fall back. Now, Even though we've lost overall 50~80 movement speed with no Q charge, you could make a pull much further out of safety range because of the ridiculous movement speed you've attached to his R; no skill necessary.

  2. Before the change Skarner gained attack speed for his Q, which any seasoned player knew if you were going to attack an enemy champion, you're going to want those full stacks to help maximize DPS. That option is now gone. What used to be a champion who could snowball a Riven after lvl 6, is now heavily reliant on pulling into a turret, instead of the before change of doing heavy damage then pulling the enemy AWAY from their turret to prevent them from running. You've turned Skarner into a purely defensive based champion.

  3. Having stun no longer on passive Q means Skarner can no longer chain CC effectively. Skarner now is forced to use his stun and slow at the same time. Before the change, you could slow a champion to move into attack, get a few pokes on him before the stun kicked in. Now you have the choice of retreat and wait for passive to reset, or Ult him to put your enemy in better position for attacking by which time your slow is back off cooldown. Thus looking like this: Slow > Poke > Stun > Suppress > Slow > Poke > Stun. You've Pretty much made him now: Slow/stun > R > wait for cooldown on E because you didn't have any time to poke at him while you had a controllable stun.

The reason why you've seen his win % increase is because it takes no relative skill anymore to do a baron or dragon with his current passive. His new passive isn't built around killing champions. It's about farming the crap out of that jungle. He doesn't require blue buff anymore because he can just sit in his passive and give his mid lane the buff. This change didn't make him better, it just made him easier to use, but at the cost of killing his lane game completely.

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